Lonestar Training is a law enforcement officer- and military veteran-owned and operated survival skills and firearms-proficiency training school located in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Lonestar’s founder, former US Marine and current law enforcement officer Alan Carpenter makes his point quite clear: “In order to fight evil, good people have to do something to prevent it. Evil will always be in our lives, but if we take action against it, then we can prevail. Being trained-up on how to prevent evil is what Lonestar Training is all about.”
Given the Valentine’s Day mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, Carpenter and company decided to extend its experience and skills to school teachers…for free. As the nation bandies-about whether to arm or not arm school teachers, Lonestar Training’s arms are open to instructional provisions.
I had the privilege to connect and chat with Carpenter who, when not training students in the dynamics of firearms and defensive tactics, is a full-time deputy with the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office (SLCSO). Carpenter served in the United States Marine Corps for four years active-duty and four years reserve-duty. It was during US Marine reserve-duty that he joined the SLCSO with whom he has served for the past five years.
His current assignment with the sheriff’s office is as the agency’s training coordinator. In fact, Deputy Carpenter spoke with me between work-related stints: Last night he taught a cadre of deputies in-service instruction in stress night-shoots and, thereafter, a day-shift ritual organizing training for deputies and local cops.
Along with co-founder Brett Davis as well as firearm and survival specialists Daniel Avilez, Andy Mahina, and Michael Gailey, Carpenter launched Lonestar Training four months ago. The building process continues, but why wait to help a hotly-debated topic involving armed teachers? Why not perform a role in helping alleviate a grievous societal issue from recurring? And, if it does come to fruition, why not ready the ranks to pushback evil while providing salvation for kids?
From the Warrior’s Heart
Lonestar is offering free active-shooter-based firearms training for all school teachers who wish to be instructed by tried-and-true firearms experts with real-life experience who share the tenacity of fighting evil with firepower supported by Constitutional fortitude.
As Deputy Carpenter coined it concisely: “We have a special heart for teachers.” Similar to cops, teachers are underpaid and overworked, yet often pull dollars from their own pockets to buy supplies for their students to excel. That deserves a special concession in my book as well.
From basic to advanced skills, Lonestar personnel are military- and street-experienced teachers instructing “courses in basic pistol and caribe, advanced pistol and carbine, TECC (Tactical Emergency Casualty Care) and hand-to-hand combatives.”
As his brainchild, Deputy Carpenter formed a top-notch firearm and survival-skills training school that could not have come at a better time. Pro-Second Amendment folks can get properly outfitted while anti-gun enthusiasts can watch from the sidelines, because that is free too. Heck, it may even be one of Lonestar’s graduates who saves the life of an anti-gunner.
As I continued to speak with Carpenter, an echo resounded, and that echo was We are not in this for profit, we are offering this to teachers because so much good can come from it, and lives can be saved from this training. Anti-Second Amendment voices may sound like crickets but pro-self-defense supporters can stand and applaud characteristics evincing patriotism and nobility delivered via entrepreneurial spirit at no cost to taxpayers.Â
Since launching four months ago and only recently offering free firearms and self-preservation training to teachers, Deputy Carpenter says he has thus far received “pretty good feedback.” We agreed with our own experiences that more and more teachers are waving their hands and going all-in with the national thrust to train and arm teachers. Conversely, the few standouts we both analyzed are categorically in the relative gun-shy demographic, and not necessarily opposed.
And that last factor is certainly considered and included in any firearms training, especially when taught by passionate instructors like Carpenter. Besides the rudimentary features of firearm training, Lonestar instructors indoctrinate students on not only the practical nuances of firearm skills but also the academics such as liabilities and responsibilities, quite similar to how cops are trained and retrained (recertified) per state law enforcement commission mandates.
I inquired of the scope of Lonestar Training and how geographically far instructors anticipate offering free courses for teachers. Carpenter readily qualified that he and his colleagues will travel anywhere throughout the state of Utah and that, providing logistics can be worked-out, beyond Utah borders is within the realm of possibilities.
Given that Lonestar instructors are all fully employed in law enforcement roles, blocking the time to travel is a logistical consideration…but one they seem willing to endeavor for the cause. Whether on- or off-duty, Lonestar’s team of trained professionals implore Second Amendment rights and seek to instill self-defense skills in our nation’s educators. In a sense, it is a sort of symbiosis: educators of firearms and survival training educators to survive with their students aided by a firearm.
The way Carpenter sees it, even the gun-shy types can acquire usable skills for the classroom or any setting. Carpenter explored factors I had not considered, such as classroom designs and engineering. Do teachers know where in their schools and classrooms walls are solid brick versus easily penetrable sheetrock? Do teachers receive any insights regarding how to deny access, should a perpetrator show-up raising cane? Are gun-shy teachers conscientious of “improvised weapons” to use against assailants, and how to wield them adequately?
Great food for thought…and a bevy of lessons for those who enable learning for youngsters. After Parkland’s active-shooter incident, nothing must be undervalued and all opportunities ought to be considered. It bears repeating: What if at least one teacher that day was armed and ready to defend? How many fewer funerals would there have been? How many closeted maniacal active-shooter monsters would refrain from prowling educational institutions? With the knowledge that one or more individuals may be armed, how many assailants in general would possibly reconsider their grotesque mindset altogether?
Speaking of mindset, Carpenter expounded on the virtues of proper training mindsets and fact-based testimony that firearms is a perishable skill which thus must be rehearsed again and again. That talks to the issue of recertifying often and practicing diligently.
Lonestar Training is presently enduring the “legal hoops” required to also become a certifying authority pertaining to concealed-carry permissions.
Carpenter explained the legal prose which, albeit vast, are necessary and worth it so as to fully declare armed-and-ready teachers as well as others under Lonestar tutelage.
Despite the national debate and holdouts for other options, Carpenter forges ahead within the boundaries of the Second Amendment to thwart active-shooter types who care not for resistance. Carpenter and I concur: Teachers are best positioned to fell evil-doers terrorizing school campuses.
As President Trump made his position quite clear after the Parkland, Florida debacle —training and arming teachers via a voluntary basis, with a monthly stipend for doing so— teachers appear the most suitable component to prevent a Parkland copycat.
In a slightly dispirited counter-perspective portrayed by Shelby County, Ohio Sheriff John Lenhart. “I agree with those folks who say teachers should teach and cops should be cops, but we got a mess on our hands. If I have to wait on state officials, on the federal government, on psychologists to figure out why people hurt one another, we would have nothing in our school system,” Sheriff Lenhart told the New York Times.
Wishy-washy or not, legislation is under-way to arm teachers. On Tuesday, February 27, 2018, Florida’s House Appropriations Committee voted 18-11 to fund a “school marshal” program to the tune of $67 million.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, the “$67 million ‘school marshal’ program is the most controversial aspect of a House bill that imposes a three-day waiting period for gun purchases, raises the age to buy any gun from 18 to 21 and gives police more power to seize guns from people who threaten themselves or others. Most of the money for the marshal program would be spent on training [teachers].”
Florida State Rep. Jose Oliva (R — Miami Lakes) categorized teachers as “The last line of defense.” I like to think teachers are the first and last line of defense, and proper training can ensure that trench does not get breached.
In all, Florida’s plan calls for arming 10 teachers per school which amounts to roughly 37,000 trained/armed educators statewide.
Yet it does not come without hiccups. Florida’s legislative body wrote their approval to train teachers to carry firearms in class “under the direction of local law enforcement — if superintendents or school boards approve.” We shall see how/if that ball bounces with local governance. Most smaller school districts I am aware of are not only now getting on-board with arming teachers —and administrators in some areas— they have been doing so for years. Zero school shootings are the dividend.
While governments all across the American terrain gear-up and troubleshoot flaws in school security, a small band of brothers comprised of military veterans and law enforcement officers are primed in the Ready! position.
Deputy Carpenter and Lonestar Training professionals are poised to train all Utah’s teachers for free, costing the taxpayer zero, zilch, nada, zip. That’s something I can get behind, and this article is one testimonial.Â
As Archilochos once philosophized for all warriors: “We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.” The experts among the Lonestar Training team added, be “Hard to kill.” Let’s teach the bad guys a lesson once and for all.
